When the Light Hurts: The Hidden Power of the Dark Night of the Soul

There comes a point in every seeker’s journey when the light that once guided them starts to burn.

Meditation feels hollow.

Mantras ring empty.

The rituals that once set you on fire now leave you cold.

You wonder if you’ve lost your way —

but what’s really happening is the Dark Night of the Soul.

It isn’t a punishment.

It’s initiation.

And though it feels like falling apart, it’s actually the moment your Soul starts to come together.

What Is the Dark Night of the Soul?

The phrase “Dark Night of the Soul” is spoken of beautifully by the mystic St. John of the Cross,

but the experience is far older — older than language itself.

It’s the stage of awakening when the scaffolding of your old identity begins to crumble.

Everything that once gave you meaning — beliefs, routines, relationships — starts to fall away.

Not because you messed it all up,

but because your Soul is done living inside borrowed light.

This is the descent.

The alchemical nigredo — the blackening, where the ego dissolves and the real work begins.

Why the Light Starts to Hurt

At the beginning of the spiritual path, light feels like liberation.

You expand, awaken, see through illusions.

But eventually, that light starts to expose everything still in shadow —

the places you avoid, the pain you’ve ignored, the self you’ve denied.

And that hurts.

Not because the light is cruel,

but because illumination demands honesty.

It burns through everything false —

the masks, the personas, the coping patterns —

until there’s nothing left but what’s real.

This is where many turn back.

They label it “low vibration.”

They scramble to get back to “high vibes.”

But all they’re doing is abandoning their own becoming.

Something in you knows:

when the light hurts, it’s because it’s entering deeper layers of the Soul.

The Purpose of the Descent

The Dark Night is not the end of your spiritual journey —

it’s the beginning of embodiment.

You’re not losing your connection to Spirit.

You’re losing your dependence on illusions of Spirit.

Everything you’ve projected outward —

the guru, the guide, the ritual, the system —

gets stripped away so that your own inner current can finally speak.

The void you’re staring into?

That’s not absence.

It’s space being cleared for truth.

And that truth, when embodied, becomes power.

How to Move Through the Dark Night

There’s no quick fix.

No spell, no crystal, no mantra that will rush you through the dark.

But there are ways to walk it with awareness and err grace…?

Graceful gracelessness, maybe. Hee hee-

Stop fighting the fall.

I call it the edge, and does it epically suck or what?! & it just keeps cycling around, one step closer, and closer-

You can’t ascend by resisting descent. Let yourself unravel, one little tiny release of one micro white knuckle at a time. Every ending is a portal.

Name the shadows.

Write what’s surfacing — anger, grief, apathy. Don’t label it “bad energy.” It’s your unintegrated power asking to return. It’s the greater spectrum of your whole self trying to be heard as valid, to mend into the central pillar of yourself.

Explore mindful solitude.

Conscious community, togetherness kumbaya and all that- though, what about the community of yourself. What is it like to discover that you’re not ever alone. I read somewhere, but don’t remember who said it, but it set my heart on fire. It went something like-

“The one who remembers they are everything, is never alone”

Remember: this is grace in disguise.

You are being stripped, yes. But what falls away was never you. Truth is inevitable. It can only be obscured, distorted- not stripped.

before gold, there is rot.

Before clarity, there is chaos.

Before resurrection, there is ruin.

The Dark Night is not the death of your magic —

it’s the compost where new life begins.

When you meet your darkness instead of fleeing it,

you become something sacred and untamed:

a human who knows how to hold light and dark as lovers in the same breath.

That’s ‘real’ awakening.

That’s ‘real’ power.

Ick, I’m not a fan of telling anyone what real is, or what is authentic- but it adds drama to the point of the words, loooollll. Doesn’t it though?!

---

The Invitation

If these words are resonating through your bones,

you’re not alone in the dark.

The temple holds regular group ceremonials- Did you know? — it’s a space for those walking through their own dark night, the ones longing to live communion.

Together, we work through the Soul field: untangling energetic knots, reclaiming power, and learning to let the dark teach its language of light.

RETURN — Immersing you into The Original Design Process in group fellowship

→ JOIN US

In holy unholy rapturous sentiments,

Temple Of The Ways

PREVIOUS ---- NEXT